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Comment by Blikkentrekker | Hacker News Reader

> You are confusing the minds of people who have a right to the truth and therefore the freedom to express themselves.

That is a most silly argument.

One does not loose any freedom to express oneself if one believe in a falsehood, for if that were true, no man would enjoy any such freedom as all believe at least some falsehoods.

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I'd argue that if you have been misled then you have not formed an opinion: you have been tricked into accepting someone else's opinion. I do not think that a delusion is truly an opinion.

Perhaps, but how does that limit one's freedom to express one's opinion? It only limits one's power, not freedom in forming it.

Having the freedom and the power to do things are two entirely different things. A mute and deaf man is considerably hampered in the power to express his opinion, but not in his freedom to.

Similarly, freedom to own property is an entirely different matter to whether a citizen have the capital to purchase it.

Ah, I did not put across my point very clearly. I was not trying to imply that believing in a falsehood should mean one should be prohibited from speaking it (with exceptions). I meant an opinion born from manipulation is not truly one's own, and to express it is not expressing one's own opinion, rather someone else's.

If you only believed lies, your thoughts can never truly be free. However if you believe some truths, your thoughts as expressed and built on top of those truths are free, whereas those built on top of lies are not. Freedom here means freedom of expression. You can still tell lies, but you will never truly be free to produce confident thought because your mind is trapped in a prison of delusion.

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